Armored Core 6 Player Beats Every Boss With Just His Fists

Armored Core VI is hard enough if you’re playing it the right way, but have you considered trying to beat every boss without guns, laser swords, or rocket launchers? That’s what Twitch streamer ZeroLenny just did in what he’s billed as one of his least-fun stunt runs ever: He managed to beat the game using mech fisticuffs and nothing else.

If you’ve ever run out of ammo for one of your guns while playing Armored Core VI, you’ve probably noticed that you’ll automatically ditch the weapon and just start punching instead. You can in fact go into battle without any weapons at all and just punch enemies until they explode.

In some instances, punching can even be a little OP, as user Dynoexe demonstrated in a clip that blew up on the Armored Core subreddit yesterday. Punching does decent damage, has a quick cooldown, pulls you toward the enemy, and can even stunlock them for a bit if you get the right flow down. While not recommended against human opponents online, it can completely throw AI enemies off their game.

Enter ZeroLenny (via Eurogamer) who decided to try and take down every boss this way and document it in a video. Using only the assault charge kick and weapon-less arms, he managed to eventually beat the game, though it was clearly a slog. The tutorial helicopter boss was a pain because he couldn’t manually ditch his guns and had to rely solely on his charge kick. But after that, ZeroLenny quickly settled on a quad-leg build to maximize the kick effectiveness and aerial maneuverability.

Infamously tough boss Balteus wasn’t even that big of a chore. It was actually the Cleaner, a giant lava spewing street sweeper, that presented more of a nuisance due to the awkwardly placed weak spot and dangerous short-range swipes. Unsurprisingly, CEL 240 ended up being the toughest encounter simply because of its mobility and second-phase health bar. Even on multiple playthroughs that fight is still a pain, and I can’t imagine it without long-range, high-impact missiles to easily stagger it.

“Is this run hard?” ZeroLenny said near the end of his video. “Yes oh fucking god yes it is.” While the Ice Worm and CEL 240 were the biggest challenges, he noted that Core vs. Core fights are actually very straightforward thanks in large part to being able to pin similarly-sized opponents into corners like they’re in a boxing ring. So if you’re struggling against the late-game Cinder Carla fight, for example, maybe give it a try. The beauty of Armored Core VI is all about experimentation, after all.

      

Speedrunner Beats Starfield In Under 3 Hours

A Starfield player runs across rocky terrain.

Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

Though Starfield isn’t even out of its Early Access period yet (its full release will happen at 12:00 a.m. UTC on September 6, or 8 p.m. Eastern on September 5), one speedrunner has already managed to beat Bethesda’s hundreds-of-hours long game in less time than it takes to watch Barbenheimer. The speedrunner, Micrologist, wrapped up the NASA-punk giant in a neat 2 hours, 51 minutes, and 42 seconds, VG247 first reported.

Micrologist, who’s previously completed games like Doom Eternal in just over an hour and Bugsnax in 19 minutes, posted a time-stamped version of their Starfield run on YouTube on September 3. For viewers and other eager speedrunners, the video demonstrates which parts of Starfield’s main quest are easy to gloss over, and which sections require even a speedrunner’s full attention. Naturally, the entire 3-hour video coalesces into one mega spoiler for anyone who hasn’t completed Starfield’s approximately 40-hour main quest, or for anyone who hasn’t yet accessed the game ahead of its official, global launch.

When will Starfield be available on Xbox’s subscription Game Pass?

Competition between Starfield speedrunners is about to get more dense and people currently cowering from spoilers are, conversely, going to chill out—we’re very close to that official launch at 8 p.m. Eastern on September 5, which is when every Game Pass owner will gain access to Starfield.

You can also preload the action role-playing game on either your Xbox Series X/S or via Steam right now.

Read More: Here’s When You Can Actually Start Playing Starfield

Just remember that “you’ll need to clear out some room on your SSD, as Starfield takes up a decent amount of space,” Kotaku staffer Zack Zwiezen writes in a recent article, “specifically, around 139 gigabytes on PC and 126 gigs on Xbox Series X/S consoles.” The tricky part will be condensing those 139 gigabytes into a 2-hour world record.

 

Tears Of The Kingdom Player Beats Game Without Touching Surface

Link is shown falling through the sky toward a sky island.

Image: Nintendo / Kotaku

So much of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is spent jumping between Hyrule’s landscape and the floating islands above it that I can’t fathom somehow beating the game without traversing both the sky regions and Hyrule proper. But that’s exactly what one player miraculously managed to pull off.

TotK subreddit user Black_Hand_Gotthard shared a post (h/t Polygon) with a screenshot of both the ending cutscene and a map of the game’s sky layer filled out with all of the airborne fast-travel points, proving that they did indeed complete the game without visiting the surface of Hyrule. They responded to questions about how they pulled this off, and it sounds like they used a lot of the Zonai tech that gives you navigation tools like gliders to move through the air or rockets that propel you up higher. But it also sounds like the game’s highly popular makeshift hoverbike came in handy as well.

A screenshot of a Reddit post shows the map of Hyrule's sky islands.

So yeah, in theory, you could get around in Tears of the Kingdom without touching the ground for several hours. However, beating the game does require you to go down to the surface…but not necessarily touching down on Hyrule’s ground.

Spoilers for Tears of the Kingdom follow.

The final boss fight against Ganondorf takes place underneath the floating Hyrule Castle. Reaching this area would usually require something like the paraglider, which you have to go to the surface to get, but Black_Hand_Gotthard says they were able to survive by using fairies, which will revive Link should he lose all his health. Barreling from the sky islands to the core of Hyrule—bypassing the surface entirely—is nothing when you’ve got a little magical person stashed in a bottle in your pocket.

All of this is made possible by Tears of the Kingdom’s open structure, which doesn’t really require you to do anything specific at any time after you pass the prologue. That freedom means you can easily miss things like the paraglider that are ostensibly on the main path because you can simply fuck off and do other things.

Tears of the Kingdom has been out since May, and I’m still fascinated at how people are finding new ways to play it. It’s a shame we’re not getting DLC, because adding new toys and tools would no doubt give the community yet more oft-strange, definitely fascinating new ideas.

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